The display itself is an LM044L 20×4 character display. This provides a viewing area that is about 3″x1″ and since it’s an HD44780 compliant LCD screen, writing data to it takes very little effort (and RAM) compared to a graphic LCD. A PIC 18F2550 drives the device, taking input from a half-dozen buttons, driving the display, and turning on the enclosed buzzer when it’s time to get up. There’s a backup battery which will keep the settings when power is lost. The daily alarms, current time, and back light brightness can all be adjusted from the four screens that make up the settings menus. The only thing that it’s missing is a precision timekeeper, but that should be easy to add either by measuring the frequency of the mains or by using an RTC chip.

I’m wondering if that’s a typo or if it’s a different model because if the screen is 76mmx25mm that watchband is about a quarter inch or less (not going off the above picture – going off the one where the back is off the clock and they are in the same plane.

A cool hack but if you just added a network connection you could have it use SNTP and you could even possibly have it interface to an iCal server so you could set the clock from the internet. Throw in a battery back up and you are good to go. If you don’t have a network cable you could use BlueTooth, or ZigBee to interface to a desktop PC or if you have a server. Throw in an MP3 chip, amp and some speakers and you have a networkable clock radio :) A bit pricey but if you are going to do the project why not?

Hi, i’m the one who made this…you are right..it’s not an LM044L, that was just the code of the display in the schematic software, i forgot to hide it..
the display has a viewing area of 1.7×5 inches. it’s a very nice display..

the timekeeping is made with a 32.768khz crystal and a timer interruption.. it’s pretty accurate..i didn’t need an external rtc,everything was made in software.

@fartface
“Cheaper, better, and probably keeps time better as well.”
Anyone who suggests on HAD that someone could have bought a product rather than making it themselves has totally missed the point of the site. Perhaps you’d fit in better to the Engadget crowd.

Mains frequency is a /terrible/ time source; other then being rather more dangerous to work with when integrating it with your LV circuitry, it’d be MUCH less accurate than a 50 cent 32.whatever crystal. Only way to get more accurate time is atomic clock references, but mains? It’s whack, it’s never exactly 60/50hz, it changes with load all the time, up and down.

Sure, it’s never exactly 50/60 Hz, but it is regulated to be very accurate over the course of a day, for exactly this purpose. That’s why a majority of the off-the-shelf alarm clocks out there use it as a timebase.